EDITORIAL: 'County's role' is elusive

Published: Wednesday, June 25, 2014 at 05:19 PM.

Our Sunday story about the future of Navarre quoted a number of people lamenting that the Navarre area doesn’t have a movie theater, a bowling alley, more and nicer restaurants and so forth. We fully expected somebody to chime in with the usual wish: If we just put the right people in office, they’ll get these things for us.
But nobody did. Instead, Tony Gomillion, Santa Rosa County’s public services director, was refreshingly honest about the limits of politics. “Restaurants and businesses make site selections based on many criteria,” he said. “I’m not sure what the county’s role is in bringing a movie theater to Navarre.”
We’re not sure either.
Companies that own and operate movie theaters decide where they want to build them. Politicians don’t.
Companies that own and operate restaurants, bowling alleys and just about every other kind of enterprise pick the towns where they want to do business. Bureaucrats don’t pick for them.
What politicians and bureaucrats CAN do is make a town more inviting to a prospective business. They can lower taxes, offer tax incentives and roll back regulations.
At the other end of the marketing spectrum, politicians and bureaucrats can scare away potential builders by overtaxing and overregulating. Punitive “impact fees” can be a deal-breaker. Nitpicking “design standards” can give a company second thoughts.
In short, a town with a reputation for being unfriendly to new businesses won’t get many.
So that’s the key for Navarre residents — and all others in Northwest Florida — who are eager to pull up a chair at a nice new restaurant. The people who make the rules ought to make the area attractive to entrepreneurs. Business owners will notice.

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Our Sunday story about the future of Navarre quoted a number of people lamenting that the Navarre area doesn’t have a movie theater, a bowling alley, more and nicer restaurants and so forth. We fully expected somebody to chime in with the usual wish: If we just put the right people in office, they’ll get these things for us.
But nobody did. Instead, Tony Gomillion, Santa Rosa County’s public services director, was refreshingly honest about the limits of politics. “Restaurants and businesses make site selections based on many criteria,” he said. “I’m not sure what the county’s role is in bringing a movie theater to Navarre.”
We’re not sure either.
Companies that own and operate movie theaters decide where they want to build them. Politicians don’t.
Companies that own and operate restaurants, bowling alleys and just about every other kind of enterprise pick the towns where they want to do business. Bureaucrats don’t pick for them.
What politicians and bureaucrats CAN do is make a town more inviting to a prospective business. They can lower taxes, offer tax incentives and roll back regulations.
At the other end of the marketing spectrum, politicians and bureaucrats can scare away potential builders by overtaxing and overregulating. Punitive “impact fees” can be a deal-breaker. Nitpicking “design standards” can give a company second thoughts.
In short, a town with a reputation for being unfriendly to new businesses won’t get many.
So that’s the key for Navarre residents — and all others in Northwest Florida — who are eager to pull up a chair at a nice new restaurant. The people who make the rules ought to make the area attractive to entrepreneurs. Business owners will notice.